


a hundred thoughts to make this one disappear

by lodessa



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Declarations Of Love, Emotions, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, First Time, Insecurity, Post-Season/Series 07, Winterfell
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-20
Updated: 2018-11-20
Packaged: 2019-08-26 07:07:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16676935
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lodessa/pseuds/lodessa
Summary: "He cannot deny that Brienne is the reason he is here.  He might have gone to meet with the Dragon Queen (truly her reasons to hate him are at best even with Sansa’s but at least Tyrion has gained her favor and surely he might have prevailed with her) or headed straight to the Wall where in all likelihood they are desperate enough to take him without much hesitation. He hadn’t, choosing instead to head to Winterfell.  It was Brienne who had inspired his departure from King’s Landing, though, and it is Brienne who he has sought out now, feeling somehow that it is only with her beside him that he becomes a man capable of any sort of goodness."Jaime arrives at Winterfell and struggles to explain himself.  Some things are easier for others to accept than they are for Brienne.





	a hundred thoughts to make this one disappear

“What’s below shit for honor then... That’s what I have. I have lived most of my life in infamy, but that was always the one thing I clung to: I was always true to Cersei, until now.”

He should be more courteous, careful not to curse while talking to this woman who could easily have him imprisoned or executed. It isn’t in his nature though. Jaime has always had a provocative streak (less noticed by others than that of his siblings, who is going to question the words of a skilled swordsman, handsome and well born) and harsh words are the only way he’s ever found to gain the courage to speak hard truths.

Sansa Stark doesn’t flinch, though. The hard eyed lady in front of him might as well be another creature entirely from the quavering girl he had last seen her as. He supposes he ought not be surprised. He is hardly the callow shining empty knight she one met. Instead, he’s maimed and rather less well kept, but with infinitely more sense of purpose… and shame. Jaime hadn’t thought he still had the capacity for shame, after all those years publicly being scorned for disployalty and secretly hiding a loyalty that would have created far more scandal and being sorry for neither. Now though… well it seems as though he’s making up for lost time.

“Loyalty and faithfulness are a mutual arrangement. My father always used to say that the obligation of a lord to his peasants was as binding as any other and that if he did not have the loyalty of those under him he should look to his own acts for the source of that breach. You can’t be untrue to someone who isn’t true to you. ”

Of course she knows. He wonders if everyone else has known all along, that his sweet sister was no more true to him than to her marriage bed. Oh her marriage to Robert had strung, had caused him endless torment, but at least with that sot he’d known there was nothing of her heart of inclination in it, it was a duty she loathed, one that he only seemed better in comparison to. Now, though, knowing that there were others, others whom she had chosen of her own accord. He wonders if those who knew had laughed at him as he had laughed at the king all those years.

It doesn’t matter. He needs to focus. Ignoring the jab phrased like compassion, he chooses to address the rest of her response.

“Of course he did. Eddard Stark, now there was a man who had honor for shit rather than the reverse. You need not make a pretense of justifying my actions, Lady Sansa. I do not expect you to look at me with anything but horror and disdain after everything I’ve done: to strangers, to your family, and even to my own.”

 _I am the man who pushed your little brother out a window. What should it matter to you why I did it? Why should you consider anything else that I may yet do?_ That is the voice that drove him North, drove him from his sister’s bed. For so many years he’d slept soundly without any of these things troubling his conscience, but after Harrenhal they did once more, louder than before.

“People can change, Ser. I am no longer the idealistic stupid girl I once was,” she interrupts his thoughts by replying. How could she be after what his family had done to her? “ You would be right to think I would have no reason to trust you, if it were not for one thing.”

He knows that Cersei had not been kind to Sansa, perhaps is was why she seems strangely willing to accept his defection. It might be easier for her to lay all of the crimes of House Lannister at his sister’s feet. 

“And here is where you tell me that the one act I am ashamed of is the reason you are willing to give me a chance, just as the whole world despises me for the one deed I am proud of.”

“That is not it at all,” Sansa shakes her head, continuing to treat him with more indulgence and patience than he can fathom the cause of. She almost smiles as she tells him, “Someone else has vouched for you.”

Tyrion? He ponders if the two of them are in correspondence, if perhaps he was even behind her escape from King’s Landing. It would be like him, to feel responsible for her despite the fact that their “marriage” was an unconsummated sham mutually forced on them by their now departed father. Jaime knows his little brother, or at least he’s always thought he did, that Tyrion in his own way has always had more honor than the rest of them, crude and uncouth as he can be. Does he still believe that? After the patricide? Can he judge that act after his own? Does it matter? He was so angry with his brother the last time they spoke, deservedly so, but who else would speak on his behalf? 

“I don’t know what you’ve been told but-”

“Would you accuse Lady Brienne of lying? Surely if there is one person in Westeros who still possesses the virtues of honor and honesty it is the Maid of Tarth.”

“Brienne…” Everything he was thinking and intending to say stopped abruptly, his prior thoughts crumbling to nothingness like a wall pummeled by catapults. “She spoke of me?”

He cannot deny that Brienne is the reason he is here. He might have gone to meet with the Dragon Queen (truly her reasons to hate him are at best even with Sansa’s but at least Tyrion has gained her favor and surely he might have prevailed with her) or headed straight to the Wall where in all likelihood they are desperate enough to take him without much hesitation. He hadn’t, choosing instead to head to Winterfell. It was Brienne who had inspired his departure from King’s Landing, though, and it is Brienne who he has sought out now, feeling somehow that it is only with her beside him that he becomes a man capable of any sort of goodness.

“Is it really so much of a surprise? Unless you truly did not save her life, did not treat her fairly, did not set her to do what you could not in hopes of fulfilling your promise to my mother through her.”

When had Brienne talked to Sansa about these things? Was it before their latest exchange of words back at King’s Landing? Was it when he arrived just now? 

“Lady Brienne would never lie, but perhaps her perspective is too generous. She cannot see into my heart, cannot imagine-”

“You say that your loyalty to your sister has always been the one thing you prided yourself on, but what did that loyalty demand? Treason, murder, falsehood and deceit. Indeed no one can see into your soul, Ser Jaime, but all evidence suggests that breaking with Cersei must be part of a larger change for the better, that perhaps that loyalty was the source of your degenerate life and only by abandoning it could you improve.”

“Is that what Brienne says?” he can’t help asking. Brienne. He knew she was here, was with Sansa, but he never imagined she’d speak of him. What has she said to convince Sansa not to immediately throw him in a cell? 

“Not in so many words, no. Her esteem for you is evident, though. So I thought I would get to the bottom of it. She cannot investigate in truth, not as I can. As you yourself have said, her heart is more generous than either of us can afford to be. So is she deceived, Ser Jaime, to praise your honorableness in these matters?”

He cannot gauge the import of Sansa’s words. He longs to demand details but he is in no position to demand anything. Still, he desperately wants to know. What could be possibly say to satisfy Sansa on this subject? Does she truly believe what Sansa has suggested? (That there is good in him; that he’s changing for the better.) 

“It is true that I have had a change of heart, that I have done what my cowardice permitted to aid her. I didn’t leave my sister because she asked me to do evil, though, or even because she was untrue. I did it because she no longer had my heart. When I loved Cersei I would have burned the rest of Westeros alive for her, but...”

He stops shy of that last truth, though he’s insisted on the rest. He will not take credit that he has not earned, but neither can he speak a truth that may wound Brienne more than himself. There was a time when it was easy to say cruel things to her, but now sweet honesty seems too sharp for her goodness.

“If you no longer love her there must be a reason,” Sansa interrupts too insightfully. Has she guessed the truth? It seems impossible. He knows that Brienne herself would never suspect. She is too honest, too open, to suspect the motives of others. 

“At first I thought it was the loss of my hand, that disfigurement had unmanned me, broken me,” he delays, realizing he should have decided on his explanation before he got here. 

“You do not seem broken,” Sansa observes.

“I was,” he admits, that much he can be honest in, “but she reformed me.”

“She? Surely you do not mean Cersei...”

“Seven no. Brienne. It is Brienne who is responsible for what reformation I have managed. She told you I saved her life and I did, but what she did for me was just as much of a rescue and something far more difficult.”

Surely he can give her that much credit. Sansa must know the Maid of Tarth well enough by now, must trust her in no small measure. There is no way to explain his presence here without admitting the debt he owes Brienne, not when he didn’t lead off with the White Walkers right to begin with. Even if he had… surely he’s known to be selfish enough that it would be suspect.

“What did she do for you?” 

“She pulled me out of the pit of self pity I had fallen into, yea and the fog of apathy I had been living in before that. She made me want to be better, more like her, more worthy-”

It is not a lie. It is the only truth he can own, for the rest of it defies words and reason. The whole truth is too dangerous, for Brienne as much as for him. Yet he’s tired of deceit and concealment.

Sansa looks smug at this, replying, “this seems to corroborate rather than contradict your redemption, Ser.”

“Surely, you cannot suggest that my feckless shift of loyalty-” he begins only to have her interrupt him once more.

“Answer me this: Do you foresee shifting your alliance again? Would you turn on the Maid of Tarth as you have your sister?”

It’s an abrupt transition and her quick change of tack catches him off guard. _Cersei taught her more than I realized_ he discovers. 

“I’d rather die,” he finds himself saying without thinking, only afterwards realizing the implication, not only of his response but of her question itself.

It seems to strike Sansa as well. She takes a moment to examine his expression, clearly trying to decide whether to believe the abrupt earnestness of his response. 

“Brienne,” Sansa calls out, and the wench herself emerges from behind a pillar. Gods, has she been here the whole time?

“Yes, milady,” Brienne replies, glancing awkwardly back at Jaime, her face more flushed than the weather might account for.

She is the same as ever, he supposes, towering and solid, hair paler than her broad face and those bright innocent eyes that no longer seem so at odds with the rest of it. He wonders now that he ever thought so wrongly. 

“I’ve made a decision, regarding Ser Jaime,” Sansa announces, “I’m leaving his fate in your hands. If you choose to vouch for him, he will be accepted freely here. I will enact no revenge on him for his prior misdeeds, but I will hold you responsible for any trepasses he might commit moving forward.”

“And if she does not?” Jaime asks, not wanting to know the answer.

“I suspect that Danaerys Targaryen would find the gift of the man who slayed her father to be a very persuasive gesture of diplomacy, don’t you think?”

“In that case-”

For a moment he wants to plead for Brienne not to be tasked with this responsibility, to be unselfish for once and trust his luck to Tyrion’s dubious willingness and ability to intervene on his behalf. This wavering, these bouts of desire to play the martyr, take him sometimes now and he is still struggling to understand them, so otherwise unlike him they seem.

“It is not me you need to persuade, Lannister,” Sansa interrupts his response, “I shall leave you two to discuss the matter. I am confident in Lady Brienne’s ability to subdue any ill conceived attempts you might make.”

With that she stands, sweeping her way out of the great hall with an ease that Cersei might have admired or envied if she was here. Gone indeed is the awkward child so eager to please.

“You heard all that then,” he remarks rather than asks.

“It was not my intent to spy,” Brienne replies with obvious embarrassment, “Lady Stark requested my presence as a matter of security.”

“So you thought this was what… an assassination attempt?” That isn’t like her, not at all. What had this war done to her?

“It isn’t about what I thought,” Brienne refuses to meet his eyes. What does she really think? Sansa read him more keenly than he’d expected but Brienne has a more innocent worldview, at least she did before.

“That’s not what Sansa Stark believes,” he points out, again thinking he should not have come. It was selfish and he’s always been a selfish creature, but this time that was not his intent.

“You came,” she says instead of responding, looking back towards him at last, “Have you really truly broken with your sister?”

“I have,” he confirms, trying to read the tightness in her speech, “Even if I wanted to… I do not think she would welcome me back.”

It’s not the response he wants to give. There are so many things he’s been thinking on the long ride to Winterfell, so many things he’s imagined telling her, so many declarations that sounded right in his mind.

“Why?”

She asks so simply, honestly, bluntly. There is no malice to it, though it is a cruel question. She is even plainer than his memory and yet that plainess draws him in as no beauty ever could. 

“You heard my conversation with Sansa,” he replies vaguely. He does not confirm that it was because of her, that as much as he was running from Cersei he was running to her.

“You never actually gave her an answer.”

“Didn’t I?” he replies with as much charming assurance as he can muster. 

“Why the change? Why after all this time?” she insists with evident confusion and frustration.

“Because of you. I thought it was obvious.”

It was obvious to Sansa he suspects, at least by the end. He is not sure how good or ill that will serve him. 

“I don’t understand,” she seems to say as much to herself as to him.

He almost tells her the truth. It would be a relief he thinks, to say it aloud. _I left the only woman I have ever known for you. I don’t love her anymore; because, I love you._ She would be shocked, he thinks. Likely she would not believe him, stupid stubborn wench. Even if she did, she would not, he thinks, appreciate the sentiment.

“As I told Sansa, you make me want to be a true knight, the kind I thought died out before you were born.”

It’s not a lie. She does seem to bring out that part of him, a part that he once thought long dead. It’s also not the whole truth, but he thinks maybe she could accept this much. She doesn’t though.

“I suspect you were telling Lady Sansa what you thought she wanted to hear. You’ve always been very adept at getting out of situations with guile,” she retorts mistrustfully, pacing away from him.

“What was my motivation in coming here, then? Tell me that.”

 _What wicked stories have you come up with in your head, Brienne? How much has this war changed you from the simple creature you once were?_ Would that he could give her back that idealism, though he once did his best to tear it from her.

“I do not know,” she admits, “I know only that it cannot be because of me.”

There’s nothing false about her modesty, but that makes it no less galling. 

“Fuck loyalty,” he quotes her own expression at King’s Landing, walking deliberately back towards her, “Those were your words were they not?”

“I did not… Surely you cannot imagine-”

She seems so flustered and once that might have delighted him, but now he finds no joy in her torment. No. He will press this subject no further.

“It's alright. I forgive you for turning me over to the tender mercy of the Dragon Queen,” he smiles as if he has not a care in the world, as if he still cares nothing for what anyone but Cersei thinks of him, “If I had a choice in the matter I would not want to be responsible for me either.”

“I did not say I was going to refuse to vouch for you,” she retorts, as indignantly as if he had just insulted her mother’s honor.

“You should,” he warns, only half dishonestly.

“Because you will betray me?” 

“No,” he cannot bring himself to claim such a falsehood, “Because I am a burden you do not deserve. Because I have no right to your mercy or theirs.”

Her response is prim and sanctimonious, “Mercy is not given because the recipient is worthy; it is given because the giver is.”

“You don’t have to prove anything to me,” he insists.

She doesn’t. He thinks sometimes it would have been better if she’d let him down in some way, proven herself less than she seems. But no, Brienne is exactly as she seems, and yet so much more now than he thought at first. He sees now that has not changed, not really.

“Why would you come here? Speak the truth to me, as you have before.”

There’s something in her tone, like she’s invoking an oath. He finds he cannot refuse it.

“I wanted to see you,” he says plainly, dropping his playful defense and answering earnestly in that way that only Brienne seems to compel, “I don’t like the person I have been in your absence. I cannot ask you to reform me, though.”

“Isn’t that what you are doing?” she points out, and damnit she’s right, of course.

“You have me there,” he begins sheepishly, before trading that for mock dignity, “I did begin to, but I withdraw my request. Please turn me over to Danaerys Targaryen.”

“No,” she answers abruptly, with more certainty than she’s had in any other statement she’s made thus far, “I will do no such thing. Please, just wait here while I go find Lady Stark and tell her of my decision.”

“I’m not worth it,” he tries to persuade, “Really. There’s no shame in admitting it.”

“Stay,” she tells him, putting her hands on his shoulders and pushing him into the nearest chair, before departing, leaving him with nothing to do but stew and ponder what he’s done to them both.

“Your mother knew,” a echoing voice announces from the shadows, “She didn’t tell your father because she feared what he would do, but she knew. She saw what you and your sister did, the way she always put your head in her lap.”

Emerging into the torchlight, a seated figure in a wheeled chair resolves itself. It takes Jaime a moment, but he finally adjusts to the narrowing effects of the years’ growth of the pale face of the youth before him. Impossible. 

He’s going mad, guilt and self loathing have cracked his mind. Surely the Targaryens didn’t have a monopoly on madness and after all they had followed in their footsteps, he and Cersei. Young Brandon Stark is dead, murdered by the traitorous Greyjoy child, a job that Jaime started but had lacked the conviction to finish. 

Of course, in this place, what better ghost might haunt him? The Stark boy is the perfect symbol of his corruption, his depravity. Why should his mind not merge that knowledge with the reminder of all the shameful secrets he and Cersei had kept, with a reminder that his mother had known when she died, had been horrified by what they were becoming.

 _Did we kill her?_ he wonders not for the first time. Cersei has always blamed Tyrion, but he had never shared that conviction. Jaime had long ago pushed down this thought but it comes welling back up once more, that it is their fault, that finding the two of them together behaving in ways brothers and sisters were not meant to had weakened her spirit, had perhaps even withered their baby brother within her womb. 

“I’m sorry,” he says, talking to this apparition feels no less absurd than standing here in silence, “What I did to you… it was unpardonable.”

There is no change in the ghost’s face at his words, of anger or regret or scorn. He’s not sure what he expected. Rage? Fear? Forgiveness? 

They sit there for what feels like an eternity, Brandon Stark’s face blank, expression empty. Jaime begins to wish he would resume airing Jaime’s shortcomings, hurl recriminations at him, anything but this awkward silence.

Finally a door opens. Brienne has returned.

“Lord Brandon,” she inclines her head slightly, ever respectful of everyone else’s title and position even as she was uneasy in her own. But… she can see him. She can see him and she is not even surprised to see him here.

“Sansa sees the truth in this matter,” Brandon Stark doesn’t exactly reply to her greeting, and then wheels himself from the room as suddenly as he’d entered it.

Whatever that declaration was about, it seems to have flustered Brienne. Jaime supposes it is good to know that he’s not the only one affected by these eerie pronouncements.

“He’s been like that since he returned,” she doesn’t exactly explain, “giving cryptic declarations at odd moments. He claims he can see virtually everything that’s ever happened.”

“A bit mad then,” he hazards, even though he doesn’t believe that either of them think that. Stark had known. The boy had known about something that neither Jaime nor Cersei had ever told anyone.

“Perhaps,” she does not commit to a response, “It sounds strange but then with dragons flying the skies and White Walkers at the Wall who can say.”

“How did Lady Sansa take your decision?” he asks.

“She did not seem surprised. I suspect she knew I would agree to her terms when she set them.”

“She learned from Cersei,” Jaime says before remembering he might not want to mention his sister, “And I suppose Littlefinger as well,” he hastily adds, “he has always been very adept at such manipulation as well and I have understand he supported the venture to retake Winterfell by Lady Sansa and Ned Stark’s bastard along with some Stark loyalists.”

“Sansa Stark is nothing like either of them.” Brienne seems insulted by the comparison.

“I meant no offense,” Jaime replies mostly honestly, “Those with no skill for swords must learn others somewhere. I am sure that the current Lady Stark is the model of an honorable liege lady. She clearly trusts in you a great deal.”

“Lord Baelish was recently executed,” Brienne catches him off guard him by informing him, but it’s nothing compared to the surprise of what she says next, “Lady Sansa issued the verdict and Lady Arya carried out the sentence.”

So Arya Stark has reappeared as well? It seems as though the wolves really have come home. The pack is gathering and Jaime can’t help wondering who might rise from the grave next.

“The Starks always did believe in serving as their own headsmen,” he replies, as though he is not taken aback by either part of this news, “I don’t suppose there are any other strays wandering about the place… Brandon the Builder come back to life or-”

“Your vow to their mother is fulfilled you know, both her girls back home at Winterfell, safe as any of us can be with what’s coming, and you finally forsaking your family’s campaign against them.”

“No thanks to me,” he sighs, “I might be short on honor, but I’m relatively sure it’s something you can’t have someone else gain for you.”

“Help me keep them safe, then,” she tells him, “Not that Lady Arya needs much protecting these days, but with what is coming towards us…”

“As my lady commands,” he agrees and she shoots him a withering glare.

“I’m not-”

“My mistress? My keeper? My-”

“I’m beginning to think you came all the way here for the sole purpose of vexing me, Kingslayer,” she snaps but there is something in her voice as she pronounces that familiar taunt, not sadness but something else heavy rather than sharp.

“If you are going to call me Kingslayer, at least say it like you mean it, wench.”

~

She recognizes the regression back to calling her wench is intended as a provocation, but it hardly feels such. Jaime is looking at her intently, like he’s seen something new instead of just her same plain unsightly face .

“With so many kings to go round, it hardly feels original anymore does it?” she shrugs instead of parrying back.

One less king now. She thinks back to the day she slew Stannis: vengeance for Renly at last. _Another oath fulfilled with the sword you gave me,_ she does not volunteer. 

“I suppose Queenslaying is like to be the next fashion.”

“Is that a fashion you are eager to partake in?” she can’t help asking. 

She cannot imagine that Cersei Lannister would have taken her brother’s desertion well, especially not with this latest information he’s given them that her pledge to join with them in the effort against the White Walkers was a lie from the start. What bitter words were exchanged? Has Jaime truly forsaken the woman he claimed always to have been true to, or is this just a spat between them? Is he here because he wants to be or only as a last resort as he has nowhere else to go?

“Do you want me to be?” he asks, as if it is in her power to control his inclinations.

Bran’s words ring in her ears _Sansa sees the truth_ he’d prophesized. She finds it difficult to think of these haunting proclamations as anything other than prophecy. What had he said to Jaime to make him go so pale in the face?

“Can you never simply answer a question directly?” she retorts, attempting to shove aside the conversation she had with Sansa right before Bran told her Sansa was right. Impossible. It is impossible that Jaime’s motivations could be what Sansa believes, her affection for Brienne’s loyalty and whatever remaining weakness she had for stories of romance coloring her interpretations.

“For too long I have been defined in relation to Cersei. I would not wish to continue to be, but I know the day may come when I will have to choose.”

“So many oaths…” she quotes his words from what feels like a lifetime ago, the baths at Harrenhal. That had been honest. It had shaken her to her core with the rawness of its naked honesty. Perhaps not just the honesty, if she is honest with herself, but she shoves that thought aside.

“It is time for me to make another, I think,” he says with utter seriousness, reaching out to place his hand on hers.

“Jaime…” she feels her throat go dry, “I don’t think-”

“I didn’t want to fight you and I don’t now. I’d rather fight with you. I’d rather…” he pauses and part of her is thankful for that while another part of her longs to know what he was going to say.

“Your sister once accused me of merely following whatever lord or lady I fancied-”

The implication had been there, that she had changed allegiances, that she was Jaime’s- That she- No. It would not do to think of it. _Cersei only said it to wound me_ Brienne tells herself once again, as she has countless times since that day. 

“My sister, saw me more clearly than I saw myself perhaps,” Jaime replies, as if he knows exactly what Cersei had implied, as if there was something more to it than the simple reflexive cruelty of women prettier and more well connected towards those beneath them.

“I’m not sure what that has to do with-” Brienne begins but Jaime interrupts.

“It may have taken me embarrassingly long to realize it, but I was changed when we returned from Harrenhal. All those years I never questioned or doubted that I belonged with Cersei, that we were two halves of a whole, but it was different when we came back. I denied it to myself, told myself it was any number of other things, but Cersei must have recognized immediately the bond I felt for you… feel for you. That’s why she did her best to drive you away.” 

“You make it sound as if she were jealous, an absurd notion.”

“There’s nothing absurd about it. When I went into those woods I belonged to Cersei and when I came out again I did not, though it took an embarrassingly long time for me to face it.”

He says it as if it is true, as if it is a hard revelation and not a gleeful jab. He says it as if- _No. That is impossible_ , she reminds herself.

“No one is supposed to belong to anyone,” she insists instead, “We are not heathens from Essos to buy and sell one another.”

“So we claim,” Jaime shrugs, “and yet do the Kingsguard not belong to their king, the common folk to their lords, children to their parents, wives and husbands-”

“I would not own anyone as I should not wish to to be owned,” she interrupts him, knowing he cannot know how cruel his words are. Surely he would never consider that she might think… might feel- Well it is absurd and she must conquer it now that he is here.

“And yet here I am in your possession,” Jaime insists.

“Do not mock me so,” she does her best to demand rather than beg of him, “Or I really shall begin to regret not turning you over to Danaerys.”

“As you will, your ladyship,” he smirks with an exaggerated genuflect. 

“Brienne,” she sighs, “How many times must I tell you to call me Brienne.”

“My Lady Brienne then,” he rights himself still wearing that self satisfied smirk. She supposes it was too much to have hoped that might change.

“Jaime…” she warns, only to be interrupted

“Lady Brienne,” one of the serving girls rushes in to tell her, “There’s been a raven from the Wall and Lady Stark requests you come to go over its contents with her and the others in her study.”

“Of course,” Brienne is not sure if she is glad or regretful for the interruption, “Jaime you might as well come along.”

She’s not sure what the others will have to say about that, but it’s not even as if he’s been assigned rooms she could send him to yet. If nothing else Jaime is an experienced commander, far more than anyone left here at Winterfell, surely it is better to use that knowledge than to have badgered him into coming all the way from King’s Landing to sit around uselessly.

There are certainly enough pointed stares, but that seems to be a constant at these sorts of gatherings. Lady Arya studies Jaime with what the murderous sort of glare Brienne is beginning to recognize as her default expression. Immediately Brienne finds herself mentally going over the macabre list that she’s too often overhead the younger Stark sister repeat under her breath: names of people Arya intends to murder specifically. Was Jaime’s name on it? Surely she would have noted that. 

“You didn’t mention Lyanna Stark had risen from her tomb to rejoin the living,” Jaime smirks, nodding in the direction of Lady Arya.

“Pardon?” Brienne replies, unsure of the import of his words.

“She’s the spitting image of her aunt,” he says with surprisingly sincerity, “Anyone who was at Harrenhal the day of that fateful tourney could tell you as much. The sight of Rhaegar laying those cursed winter roses upon her is burned into all of our memories.”

But Lyanna Stark… Lyanna Stark had been a beauty to inspire great men to tear Westeros asunder, to break their ancient loyalties, to risk war and revolution. 

Brienne knows that Arya Stark is not most people’s ideal of a highborn beauty. Her features are regular and her eyes bright but she carries herself with a confidence that cares nothing for charm and her form is too slight to be considered handsome like her sister. Her dress and manner of address, are not what has ever been considered pleasing and her gait-

“If you’re making a joke at the expense of Lady Arya…”

“What?” Jaime seems genuinely amused by her response. “Did you imagine her like Margaery Tyrell or, the Seven preserve us, my sister? You did didn’t you?”

Of course she had. She’d imagined Lyanna Stark as a dark haired and eyed twin of the loveliest and most praised beauties she had laid eyes on.

“The songs name her as the most beautiful woman in Westeros,” Brienne replies defensively, “Was it not reasonable to surmise she might resemble women who have been called the same?”

“Beauty,” Jaime sighs (she thinks wistfully), “is in the eye of the beholder. Lyanna Stark was cherished by her family, desired by Robert Baratheon and Rhaegar Targaryen, and yet you might glace upon her and think her plain. For all who praised her as lovely, Margaery Tyrell could never have tempted Renly Baratheon any more than you could have.”

“We don’t get to choose who we love,” Brienne finds herself revisiting his words from what feels like a lifetime ago.

“If we could, would there be any of those songs you love so much?” Jaime holds her gaze for a moment too long and she’s still short of a response when Sansa calls for everyone’s attention.

“My brother, our King, had hoped that all forces might meet to defend the Wall as one, but it appears that the delay to meet at King’s Landing has cost us that advantage,” she announces somberly, “The latest message from the Wall is that they have been breached. We have a day, maybe two, before we can expect for the first of the White Walkers to reach Winterfell.”

It is much sooner than they’d hoped, even than they’d feared. Brienne can hardly recall now the feeling of her girlhood, a time where she’d lived in fear that her life whole might pass without anything of note happening around her, let alone to her. Now there is no time to reconcile herself to one upheaval before the next overtakes it. 

“And we are alone,” Arya ventures.

“Daenerys Targaryen has joined our cause against these abominations and we have reason to hope that she may reach us with her dragons ahead of the rest of her forces and before the brunt of the White Walkers’, but the truth is that, yes, we may be alone,” Sansa confirms in response to her sister’s question.

 _What of the Night’s Watch and the Wildlings who had been defending the Wall?_ Brienne wonders but does not ask. Surely the news cannot be good if the White Walkers have moved beyond their position. None of the reasons Sansa might have for not mentioning their existing allies can be good.

“How can we be expected to hold when the Wall could not?” one of the northern lords demands to know.

“It may be we cannot. It may be we would be better served fleeing south,” Sansa does not dispute or apologize, “ I have called you here to discuss what out next moves should be.”

“If the White Walkers are moving that fast, it would only be a matter of time before they caught up to us, better to defend a secured position than be caught out on the open road.”

Everyone turns and stares at Jaime anew as he opens his mouth to utter those words, but none of them can bring themselves to contradict him, though many must be galled at the fact that he is here in this conference.

“Maybe we could hide?” a different one of the lords suggests.

“Where?” the first one scoffs.

“The crypts… ” Arya offers, a suitably macabre answer and yet, Brienne realizes, not a foolish one.

“Better than that… “ Sansa’s demeanor seems to lift from the weight this decision has clearly laid upon her shoulders, “Winterfell was built over natural hot springs, there’s a system of caves and passages down there and from everything we know the Walkers don’t do well in the heat.”

Hidden, warm, and a source of water. It seems like a better idea than going out as certain martyrs. Brienne is not afraid to die, but there is no honor in doing so pointlessly. Life has value and it is only through protecting it that death is meaningful.

“There’s a place at the heart of the caves, under the Godswood. That is where we must go.”

Brienne suspects that everyone had forgotten about Brandon Stark, sitting silently in the corner until this pronouncement. She certainly had, lost in her own thoughts. Now everyone’s attention twitches uneasily in his direction.

“We’ll need to move as many of the supplies underground as possible,” Sansa announces, Brienne is not sure whether in response to her brother’s words or in spite of them.

Tasks are divided up, though Brienne notices she is not assigned to anything. But then Sansa asks her to stay behind as the rest file out of the room.

“Brienne, a moment please. Alone,” she adds looking pointedly at Jaime.

“I’ll wait in the hall,” Jaime offers, “I have a great deal experience with that particular duty.”

Brienne has begun to find she is doing a fair amount of that self same task, ever since she started swearing fealty to liege lord and ladies but especially under Sansa’s service. More often than once, her thoughts have drifted back to Jaime, to that immortal bath at Harrenhal, to what he’d told her then of his Kingsguard vows and the conflicts he’d found in such seemingly simple duties. 

_Your duty, Brienne_ she reminds herself, pushing aside such thoughts in favor of attending to the woman she’s promised her service to. 

“What is it, my lady? Is there something you’d like me to do?”

What is it that Sansa wants her to do that she didn’t want the rest of them to hear, that she didn’t want Jaime to hear? Brienne steels herself for whatever it is; Sansa is not cruel but she is not soft either.

“We may very well all die horribly soon,” Sansa replies, “I truly believe our plan is the best option given the circumstances but…”

“You want me to draw them off? Provide a false trail?”

A suicide mission after all. Brienne understands why it is needed, the sacrifice of a person to save a greater number of them. Death for life, that is a fair and honorable exchange.

“I would not ask you to throw away your life like that,” Sansa surprises her by insisting.

“What then?” Brienne asks, perplexed as to where this conversation might be headed. She should not have assumed she could predict Sansa’s intentions, not after their earlier conversation. 

“I only wanted to offer you some advice, as your leige and as a friend I hope,” Sansa almost smiles, but then Sansa doesn’t seem to ever exactly smile in the time Brienne has known her.

“Of course, Lady Sansa,” she replies dutifully, though this friendliness unsettles her. People like Sansa aren’t friends with the likes of Brienne.

“About what I said earlier-” Sansa begins, evidently about to admit that she must have been mistaken, that a man like Jaime Lannister could never-

“I know you said it out of affection for me,” Brienne offers her the escape of saying. The less said on this matter the better for both of them. “It’s no less untrue but I am touched that you would regard…”

“Jaime Lannister came here for you,” Sansa insists again instead and despite herself Brienne hears Brandon Stark’s pronouncement that Sansa saw the truth. 

“It may be true that our trials at Harrenhal created a bond between us, a kinship of sorts, but it’s not what you think. Jaime would never-” Brienne finds herself half babbling.

“Your modesty is without reproof, my loyal Maid of Tarth, but tell me true. Is it that you do not believe Ser Jaime is in love with you or that you do not wish it?”

Not for the first time, Brienne wishes to be other than she is. For others, concealment is second nature and yet her feelings always give themselves away.

“I don’t see the purpose. He could not be. I…”

Sansa cannot understand how cruel her question is. Someone so beautiful cannot comprehend what is like for Brienne, what it is like to be ugly and impossible for a man to truly-

“You fear to expose yourself, Brienne, a fear I can sympathize with,” Sansa insists, though of course she cannot. 

“I hardly think this is the time,” Brienne insists, starting to see that Sansa will not be dissuaded from this fancy of hers.

“If we were not facing the prospect of death in so short of a time I might counsel you to take some time, observe honestly the signs and indications of his partiality. We do not have the luxury of time, no matter how much we may wish it.”

Sansa reaches out and places her hand on Brienne’s forearm, an act expansive considering the way Sansa usually holds herself in away from everyone. Only rarely has Brienne see her reach out for anyone. _Her brother_ , Brienne thinks, _Surely only with her own blood have I seen her so open._

“Your faith in others does you credit, my lady,” Brienne tells her, appreciating the gesture, despite the agony of the thoughts Sansa’s words stir up.

“Don’t do yourself the disservice of facing death with unsaid words upon your tongue,” Sansa insists, again refusing to drop the matter, “Some or all of us may perish in the coming days and believe me, when you face that finality there will be things you wish you had said to those you hold dear, before that chance passed you by.”

“I’m not beautiful like you, my lady. I am not the kind of woman a man- I mean he’s such a perfect image of manhood that the only consort capable of moving him was his own twin an exact mirror of outwardly beauty whatever she- Sansa, you cannot understand the cruelty of raising such thoughts when I am unsightly, freakish, incapable of ever-”

The words come tumbling out despite her best efforts. Brienne has tried her best to keep from these thoughts, but she can no longer hold them at bay in the face of Sansa’s persistence. 

“You are the truest soul I have found, Brienne, somehow not twisted by the cruel world you know as well as any of us. Many have loved for less,” Sansa insists, taking both her hands, and looking at her blotchy unsightly face directly as if seeing her anew, “But come, I did not mean to upset you. We will speak no more of it for the time being.”

She lets go of Brienne’s hands and returns to sit behind her desk.

“Should I stay, my lady?” Brienne wonders, not sure if this is a dismissal or simply a transition to silence, “Or would you prefer to be left alone?”

“Go,” Sansa gives her a forced approximation of a smile. “Gods know there will be precious little solitude to be found in the days to come.”

~

Jaime tries to school his expression into something resembling bored and neutral as Brienne re-emerges through the door. It’s not as if he had been trying to listen in on her conversation with Sansa, a conversation he did not anticipate the reasons the latter did not want him to hear. He has spent what feels like his whole life waiting on other people’s conversations, though: his father’s, the Targaryens’, Robert Baratheon’s, his sister’s. What is a Kingsguard knight but a very specialized sort of servant, really?

Besides, if they wanted privacy, they really ought to made sure the door was all the way closed.

Does he trust Sansa Stark’s judgement of Brienne’s feelings? I mean this is the girl who had believed Joffrey was something out of a song and that Cersei would protect her. ( _You believed in Cersei for a lot longer, _a voice within him remarks snidely.)__

__And yet, Brienne had not insisted upon her own disinterest towards him. Surely that would have been the easiest path out of a conversation she seemed unhappy to be having. Was it possible? Could it be that Brienne felt something other than a mixture of contempt and gratitude for him?_ _

__“Did Lady Stark warn you against trusting me too much?” he says, instead of anything that is on his mind. _Do you love me too? Would you tell me your feelings if I spoke of mine?__ _

__“It’s a wonder you can keep your head upright on your shoulders, given the size of it. Do you always assume that everything women have to say is about you?”_ _

__“Actually…” he begins to retort but then finds he can not, “The truth is the door was somewhat ajar.”_ _

__“It… what?” Brienne goes pale and then red in the face. “Then you heard that ENTIRE conversation?!”_ _

__“I’m afraid so. I wasn’t looking to eavesdrop but I couldn’t help hearing.”_ _

__He does not bother to point out to her that she effectively overheard him talking about her to Sansa earlier. He does not think it would help._ _

__“By the Seven…” Brienne is as agitated as he has ever seen her. “I hope you don’t think… Of course Sansa means well but her beliefs are ridiculously Clearly it’s not as though-”_ _

__He’s only ever seen her this defensively agitated on one subject: Renly Baratheon. That thought gives him the courage to push forward, to believe in what the Starks seem so sure they have seen._ _

__“That’s what Brandon Stark was talking about, wasn’t it?” he presses, “When he said Sansa saw the truth of things and you looked like someone had-”_ _

__“He could have meant anything,” Brienne stammers, “He could have been talking about today’s decision to hide underground. He could have been referring to-”_ _

__“She is right, though. At least she is correct in what she surmised about my feelings for you.”_ _

__There he’s said it, but then Brienne’s response parries that act back onto him._ _

__“Do not mock me so!” she cries as though he has struck her with a blade, “You know I-”_ _

__He takes his remaining hand and reaches out as he’s imagined doing more times than he has previously admitted to himself._ _

__“Look at me, Brienne,” he entreats, caressing the edge of her jaw and the side of her solid neck, “Really look at me. I know it may not be what you want to hear but I do love you. I left Cersei for you as much as for myself or Westeros.”_ _

__She does not flinch from his touch, does not swat away his hand or strike him._ _

__“I do not know what to say. I…”_ _

__Her eyes dart wildly, as though rebelling against his plea to hold his gaze._ _

__“Tell me truly, have I any chance at all of winning your heart? Be honest. I will not turn on you if the answer is no.”_ _

__For all her youth, Sansa Stark is right. It is better that he knows now, rather than face death wondering and regretting._ _

__“I… are you sure, Jaime, that it is love you feel for me? It could be any number of other things, respect, gratitude-”_ _

__She looks back down into his eyes, as if searching for something, and he reaches for the words to convince her of his certainty. He is certain, though it has taken him long enough to admit it to himself. It had guided his actions long before he’ d ever consciously considered such a possibility, but once he did so many things have fallen into place._ _

__“Believe me, I have pondered all of the other possible explanations at length. It was not easy for me to come to accept the truth, a truth that stripped me bare of everything I’d ever believed to be true about myself. I love you and only you, Brienne, Maid of Tarth, the one true knight left in Westeros.”_ _

__That is why all his excuses have become no longer good enough. That is why he can’t be the person he was content to stay before he met her._ _

__“This is not a trick? Not some joke at my expense?”_ _

__He can hear slivers of belief starting to slip through her incredulity on this subject._ _

__“This is one subject I would never tease you about,” he promises and means it, “But truly, tell me your mind. Tell me if I have no hope of wooing you and I will shut up.”_ _

__She begins to laugh almost hysterically, tears running down her cheeks._ _

__“Is it really that funny… that is absurd?”_ _

__He’s not sure what he expected, maybe her curse him or to challenge him to a duel, but it's certainly not this._ _

__“It’s…” she struggles for breath, “It’s just… I never thought, never hoped, never imagined-”_ _

__“I understand. You would never even consider me in such a light, knowing what you know of my history.”_ _

__It had been too much to hope. She believes too much in purity. It’s not chance that she’s ended up with the Starks, with sanctimonious Ned Stark’s family._ _

__“Oh Jaime,” she sighs, “Don’t be daft. How could I not wish for this, no matter how ridiculous and hopeless I thought it to be? I mean you saved my life, you told me the truth, and look at you… “ she reaches out and caresses his face with slightly shaking hands, mirroring his earlier gesture with a great deal more grace, “Tell me you did not know what you were doing, tormenting me with all these gestures it was so difficult not to interpret as more than comradely and yet I didn’t think. It seemed so impossible and after Renly I didn’t want to foolishly pine but I… Oh of course I do, you impossible man!”_ _

__For a moment he is speechless._ _

__“Say the words. Please say it if you truly mean it.”_ _

__“I love you, Ser Jaime Lannister, the Kingslayer, Lion of the Rock, Goldenhand, traitor and savoir and everything in between.”_ _

__An oath, a solemn oath that Brienne would never utter without complete sincerity; the hollow feeling of disappointment he felt moments ago is completely overtaken by a giddiness the like of which he has not felt in many many years._ _

__“I’m going to kiss you now, unless you stop me,” he warns her._ _

__It feels a little more like she kisses him. Gods it is nothing like kissing Cersei. And yet, it is so much impossibly better than he’d been able to imagine, thinking of Brienne day and night._ _

__“What do we do now?” she stammers, as they pull apart, “I don’t know. I never expected…”_ _

__“What do you want to do?” Jaime asks, knowing what he wishes for and yet aware that it cannot be, that Brienne might love him but she would never compromise her honor and that even if he had a hope of persuading her to do so, he should not._ _

__“I suppose we ought to seek out the septon?” Brienne surprises him by suggesting with a sense of urgency that he almost might fancy matches his own, “Unless that’s not what you-_ _

__“Now? You want to get married right now?” he sputters, “What about your father? Shouldn’t we at least write for permission?”_ _

__“I don’t think there’s time,” Brienne points out, “And besides it’s not as if he could be anything other than shocked that anyone-”_ _

__A terrible thought occurs to Jaime. Brienne had admitted to him once that her devotion to Renly started with a simple gesture of kindness, he doesn’t want to think it, but it is possible that she is acting out of that same belief that any man who might treat her as a woman deserves her in her entirety._ _

__“Wait a moment. Brienne… you aren’t simply accepting me because I offered are you? I would hate to think I was preying upon gratitude instead of that you truly feel for me as I do for you.”_ _

__“Of course not. Are you mad?” Brienne questions with a conviction which convinces him she is acting on her own will not in submission, “I just never thought to find my feelings returned.”_ _

__He will have to do something about that, Jaime thinks. Brienne is more than worthy of devotion and he must come up with some way of convincing her of that truth. She is too good for him, but that is one thing he can offer, he thinks. Still he has to remember that she is still innocent in many ways he cannot be, more so in some than girls many years younger than her own age._ _

__“Alright then. As much as I am eager to marry you, do you truly want to risk surviving me as the Kingslayer’s Widow instead of the Maid of Tarth? We can wait, as eager as I am to be yours in law and in front of the gods as well as in my heart, until a less uncertain time.”_ _

__He hates to say it, wishes simply to say yes and hurry towards the sept, to have her in his arms, to be joined together… And yet, he will not cause her more unhappiness for his own benefit. His name is a black mark he is loathe to share with her, but more strongly fears to leave her alone to endure._ _

__“Don’t be ridiculous. If I am to lose you in the coming fight and somehow survive, that would only make me regret a delay that became forever.”_ _

__He wonders if she truly knows that she is declaring, but he cannot doubt her sincerity, nor does he want another answer if he is to be honest with himself._ _

__“Well then. Let us go find the septon. They do still have a septon, right?”_ _

__They do. He seems a bit surprised by their arrival, and a bit more surprised when they explain to him why they have sought him out, but he does not object. Unlike the septons of King’s Landing, this man seem to remember that he is a servant of the Seven and not a lord to make law as he sees fit._ _

____

~

“Well then,” Jaime shifts to her right as they emerge from the sept into the brightness of the snow covered ground once more, slipping his hand in hers, “That was a lot quicker and less painful than all the previous weddings I’ve witnessed.”

“If this is where you start trying to order me away to safety as my husband-” she warns, still in disbelief that this is really happening, that she just got married, that they just got married. She is married to Jaime Lannister, a sentence that sounds impossible and yet somehow has become reality.

Surely there is a catch, some revelation to sour this and make her feel foolish for having believed in such impossible luck for herself.

“And why would I want you to go away when I’ve just finally gotten back to you?” Jaime scoffs, ignoring the bit about ordering all together.

“Alright then,” she is too in shock still to press the issue, “What do you want to do?” 

It is midday, still early to retire and yet their time is their own for the day. Brienne isn’t sure whether she’s hoping that Jaime will point out that tradition takes them immediately to the bedchamber following the wedding or for some other diversion from the nerves she is feeling at the prospect. 

It’s not that she doesn’t want… to truly become his **wife.** In truth she has daydreamed of such a thing a great deal despite herself. Still, she never thought it would actually happen, with anyone, let alone him. It is as though her entire world has turned backwards in a few short hours and she doesn’t want to waste whatever time they have but she doesn’t know how to move forward.

“Usually there’d be a feast, but perhaps we might content ourselves with a walk through this famous Godswood of the Starks’. We have spent all of our time promising and vowing and it occurs to me I’ve heard little of your recent adventures and you have heard little of mine. Shall we take a stroll and catch up?”

It’s not exactly relief so much as a slower paced anxiety that she feels as that moment of revelation is pushed a little further into the future. Jaime keeps hold of her hand and leans a little closer in towards her as they continue walking.

“I fought the Hound,” she tells him, not sure where else to begin, “Beat him too, though it was an ugly fight.”

“Of course you did,” Jaime replies warmly with admiration rather than with mockery, “I tried to kill one of Danaerys’ dragons and very nearly got roasted,” he adds with a self deprecating shrug. 

“I killed Stannis,” she finds herself telling him, “Earlier when I tried to call you Kingslayer and it came out sounding weak… it wasn’t just how I feel for you that made it so but my awareness that I could just as easily-”

“It’s not the same and you know it. You never swore to serve and protect Stannis Baratheon. Honestly, you aren’t about to tell me that you feel bad about ending the life of the man responsible for Renly’s death?”

“No,” she admits, “I’m not sorry about it. Then again, you aren’t sorry about Aerys.”

She’s long stopped believing he should be. No. In truth it seems a great injustice that others to not know the truth about Jaime’s most infamous moment, the reasons why he did what he did, the debt the people of King’s Landing owe him at the very least.

“I’m sorry I let it define me all this time, not so much to everyone else as to myself. “

“We all have many things that define us, Jaime.”

Ugly. Freakish. Those things have defined her as much as her actions and she still finds she cannot believe that anyone, that Jaime, could possibly define her otherwise.

“I’d rather be defined by my love for you,” he says as though it is not still strange that he should feel such a thing for someone such as her.

“As you once were by your love for Cersei?” she has to ask, wondering if he is simply clinging to the idea of love as an anchor, as something to build his identity around other than being the Kingslayer. That would explain his readiness to profess such devotion to her, of all people.

“Maybe, but I think not. You see, after you left I tried to go back to that, to clinging to that one thing that I believed was mine. But maybe you pulled the blindfold from my eyes or maybe my brother was right all along and being strong made me stupid, but no matter how much I denied it to myself at first and tried to act as though it were not so… it felt false, wrong even.”

“Because of me? I cannot fathom it.”

“The time we spent together opened my eyes and I couldn’t help seeing the truth. I started to see my sister for who she really had become, for the monster she has become. I killed Aerys because he was mad; because, his madness drove him to burning anyone his paranoia told him was a threat with wildfire. But Cersei, I stood by her side and supported her, even as she used that same wildfire cache Aerys gathered to leave a gaping hole in the middle of King’s Landing where the Sept of Baelor once stood. Her paranoia made her see enemies in everyone, even me.”

“And yet, you stayed. Surely you might have left before now if that was what you wished?”

She wants to believe his claims, wants this undeserved gift, and yet it doesn’t make sense. Why now? 

“I didn’t wish it, not in any way I understood. You have to understand that once I started to question that central belief in Cersei, in what I thought we had, everything else came back into question as well. I did a lot of things over the years, for love I told myself, and without that reason they all came back into question. You despised me for them when we met, though now you have apparently ceased to.”

“That was before I really knew you,” she feels remorseful for how she felt then, not for calling him out on his arrogance but for her small minded assumptions that the judgements of those who did not see her for what she could be would be any more accurate about this man.

“There are parts of myself I did not know,” Jaime tells her earnestly, “Parts of myself I had to look at anew to really see without the shadow of a lie obscuring them. It hurt.”

“The truth often does. Growth hurts. The agony of developing the calluses and muscles to wield a sword,” she dares to reach across his body towards the scabbard of his, the twin of the one he once gave her, “I still recall it don’t you?”

“Realizing I love you wasn’t like that, though,” he catches her hand where it lies against the sword hilt, covering it with his own, “It was more like that moment where you finally master a move you’ve been drilling for weeks or months, the moment where suddenly it feels natural and effortless.”

“How?” she can’t help asking.

“I’m sure whoever taught you initially must have told you that in sword fighting there is room for lies of denials about the truth of your body.”

“He assumed that my weak feminine form couldn’t hold up, at least at first, yes,” she cannot say without a tinge of bitterness after all this time, though there’s a sense of satisfaction in there too. 

“If you are large you must use and accept the limitations of that, if you are lithe the same, and yet sometimes the mind gets fixated on some idea of a different kind of fighter you want to be.”

She’s not sure where he is going with this, but she does know what he means.

“I’ll admit I’d imagined myself as more graceful instead of-”

“Powerful,” he finishes for her, “You are powerful and so was the impact of my feelings for you, even when I didn’t recognize it. I found myself doing things I couldn’t explain, things that seemed out of character but felt right, things that didn’t make any sense until I realized that I was acting out of love for you. I was halfway to Winterfell before I finally stopped ignoring that truth staring me in the face.”

“I don’t know when I knew,” Brienne confesses, unable to deny the impact of his words and the way he is looking at her, “I did my best not to think about it, since I never thought it would matter.”

“It matters,” Jaime’s face softens somehow, “I know the world might be ending, but it matters to me.”

“Speaking of the world ending,” Brienne can barely bring herself to continue for blushing but she does, “As lovely as the scenery is, do you think that maybe we oughtn’t waste what little time we may have before that impending end.”

“If I am with you, Brienne, my lady wife, I don’t consider the time wasted,” she declares, leaving her all the more flustered as he completely misses what she was endeavouring to bring up.

“I just meant. Well…” Her nerve nearly abandons her but the idea of letting her nerves fail brings out her resolve. “Should we be heading back to my… I mean our bedchamber?”

“Oh,” he seems surprised as he pauses before adding, “If you’re sure. I mean I didn’t know if you would want…”

She feels foolish. Of course he wouldn’t, for all his talk of being in love with her. Brienne can perhaps believe that Jaime cares for her, after all he has come for her, risked his life for her, more than once. She cannot now deny that she is important to him. She is still ugly.

Embarrassment floods her body, cheeks burning. She feels foolish and wishes her word unsaid.

“I mean not if you don’t-Forget I said anything.”

“Wait. Don’t turn away,” he entreats, reaching out and tugging on her shoulder, “Of course I do. I just know our future is uncertain and all of this might feel sudden, and if you wanted to wait until you felt more comfortable or didn’t want to risk ending up-”

His excuses make it worse. Honesty has always been the strongest connection between them and she cannot bear to think that now he feels he must lie, must pretend. No. Painful as this must be to both of them, it is better to tell the truth, no matter how humiliating.

“I was the one who pushed for us to go to the septon immediately, wasn’t I?” she tells him, humiliated but truthful as she turns back towards him despite the intense desire to curl up inside herself and retreat.

Genuine surprise seems to overtake him in response, as though he truly hadn’t considered her motivation for formalizing their relationship. Did he truly not think her passion for him that of a real woman?

“You were. Oh, of course. I didn’t think of it because I always seem to come at everything backwards.”

Still he will not be open with her, will not say what is on his mind. She begins to think she should never have accepted his declaration, never have marred their true relationship with unrealistic hopes. 

“Try to speak plainly, even just for this moment,” she presses, unwilling to live a lie, even one of omission, even one that is flattering.

He swallows before speaking and she thinks this must be it, he is finally going to admit that his love for her is not that of a man for a woman but something else entirely.

“Very well then. Yes, I would like to return to our rooms and consummate our marriage. I should like to show you how deeply I long for you, how I have imagined little else of late.”

He sounds sincerely and yet she cannot believe him. 

“Why the hesitation then?” she insists, needing an answer and yet knowing there is none that can satisfy.

“What if…” he looks embarrassed now. She didn’t know that he was capable of that, not after everything he has not flinched or colored at being faced with. “What if I leave you widowed and expecting a child?”

It is almost the same reason he gave when he hesitated earlier, though more specific. Should she have not taken it at face value then? It sounds chivalrous, and yet that’s not who Jaime is. He can be noble, honorable, but it is not the honor of grandeur, that magnanimous generosity of the great over the small. Jaime’s honor when it rises to the surface is one of equality of practicality and private moments of truth.

He’s not above personal sacrifice though, so a thought occurs to her, a thought related to her earlier assumption about what Sansa would ask of her.

Is that why he indulged this feeling of hers? What was a day or a week of pretending love for her when he had lived so many years pretending not to love Cersei? 

“Why are you so convinced that if one of us is to die it will be you?” she asks him, looking more closely at his handsome face for some telltale sign he might be planning to martyr himself.

“It seems fairer and perhaps I just this once want to imagine the world can be that, but the idea of leaving you in that position does not. So I do not wish to take my pleasure at the cost of burdening you. I’m trying to be honorable here, Brienne, despite being unaccustomed to it”

“Jaime,” she exhales slowly, finding it hard to say this, “I have no doubts that you are trying to be honorable, but are you sure that it is really in the ways you are describing. You promised not to hold it against me if I did not love you, and now I am vowing the same if you tell me you simply do not want to… well bed me.”

“Not want to-” Jaime seems to realize suddenly, what she has been trying to address, “Seven, no. Brienne, I want to desperately. I-”

He gives up speaking and instead kisses her, hand sliding into her hair, pressing up on his toes to get closer to her height. He kisses her more forcefully now than earlier, leaving her half breathless. If it is pretense, maybe this once she can live with a lie after all; because, it feels real. She wants it to be real; because, she loves him and she wants what those kisses promise as much as she’s ever wanted anything.

“Tyrion is right, maybe you really are daft,” she can’t help smiling as she tells him, “I choose to believe we will survive together, but even if what you fear came to pass, I’d rather be left with a piece of you. I’d rather not live with regrets and what ifs. Sansa was right.”

The walk back through Winterfell has never seemed so long, though perhaps that is partly because they keep pausing to indulge brief embraces that grow more heated with their progress. The way he kisses her now feels different than earlier, both less and more restrained. 

“I don’t deserve you,” Jaime insists.

“I’m pretty sure most people would think it’s the other way round.”

“Most people,” counters Jaime, pausing as they reach the edge of the courtyard to lean in and kiss her once again and Brienne feels something building within her with each press of his lips to hers, “Are idiots.”

They must be creating a scene for anyone who might see them, but Brienne can’t bring herself to care.

“Up the stairs,” she nudges him.

“Better make sure you get the door properly latched,” Jaime grins, as she closes it behind them.

“I’m not exactly sure how…” she begins, suddenly nervous again now that they are here. Sure she’s aware of the basics, has spent many hours imagining scenarios, but the actual logistics of how to get from not having sex to doing so are murky in her mind.

“May I suggest less armor,” he smirks, moving to unfasten his own, and she reaches out instead to remove it for him. She never served as a squire, but it’s not so different from her own, and in truth she’s imagined this.

Jaime doesn’t protest, instead giving way to her, looking up at her like she’s something other than what she knows she is. It’s a thill to touch him, even like this. She knows that there is to be far more than this, but it is still new, precious. 

Afterwards, he moves to try to help her with hers before laughing at himself, “Lot of good I am to you one handed.”

“It’s fine,” Brienne assures him, “I’ve been doing this on my own most of my life.”

“I’m not exactly an expert but isn’t that sort of the point of marriage, not being on one’s own?”

“That’s a rather idealistic view,” Brienne replies, though it is one that appeals.

“Come here,” Jaime entreats, sitting down at the foot of her-their bed and gesturing beside him.

Finishing removing her own armor, she sits down and lets herself get caught up in kissing him once more, warm despite the northern winter as his good hand reaches behind her to rest at the small of her back and he leans in closer and she dares to press her hands against his chest, running them over his shoulders to feel him solid and real and very much not a mere figment of her fantasy.

He kisses where her neck meets her shoulder and everything in her body just contracts but not like a recoil away so much as a pull towards. 

He must notice because he does it again, lingering a little more on just that spot, before seeming to test her reaction to others around her throat. Brienne has never liked thinking of her neck before: thick, horse like, mannish. Now though, Jaime’s kisses make her skin hum and it is as though every one sanctifies the place it touches.

She moves her hands, mirroring the path his lips have taken as she just barely grazes his flesh with her fingertips. She can feel his breathing, just a little heavier than usual, then he opens his mouth and returns to the most sensitive bit of her neck, licking there and then sucking and she unthinkingly clutches with both hands, grabbing around his neck as a wave of sensation washes over her.

“Sorry,” she gasps, realizing in horror that she has come close to choking him and rapidly dropping her hands from him, “I didn’t mean to-”

“Don’t,” he breathes, evidently much more raggedly than the moment before looking up at her, “Please don’t stop.”

Taking one of her hands in his one, he moves it back to his throat.

“You…” she can hardly believe what he might be saying, “You want me to do that again?”

He nods and she hesitantly moves both hands back to encircle his neck, squeezing slightly as their eyes remain locked. He presses into the pressure, straining forward to kiss her.

“Is it just here?” she asks, running the pads her thumbs up the front of his throat as the rest of her fingers press flat again the sides, “Or is it more than that?”

“More,” Jaime says with the shudder, “I want to feel your strength everywhere.”

She moves one of her hands up to run through his beautiful golden hair, the other gripping his shoulder and leans in closer. It hardly seems real, that she is allowed this, allowed to hold such beauty in her grasp, that he could ask her to.

It’s different the kissing that follows, less slow and thorough and more eager and choppy. The more force she uses to touch him the more he seems to use to respond with his lips. His face is flushed and his eyes focused and despite all their conversation on this point it is in this moment that she suddenly truly feels that he wants her touch as she wants to touch him. 

She keeps one hand behind his head, supporting its weight and the back of his neck, feeling the tension in the muscles connecting the two give way as he collapses towards the bed, his hand reaching out to bring her with him and she has to use her free one to keep from toppling haphazardly atop him. 

He smiles up at her, caressing her face with his one hand as she stares down at at him. Righting herself, she sits up and moves both hands over his form, shoulders, arms, chest, down towards his middle. Her hands reach his hip bones, feeling him arch up into the contact with every movement of her hands. 

“Brienne…” he murmurs, hips raised enough that she can fit her hands under them, the pull on his breeches creating a clear outline, and she has no idea what she’s expected to do (nothing, she has been led to believe by more than one source yet that doesn’t seem to be true here) but she wants to know, she wants to please, she wants to discover.

He places his hand on her thigh, encouraging her to shift, urging that leg to the other side of his prone form. Through the fabric, she can feel the heat of his touch and she grabs hold of him a little more tightly, feeling the firmness of muscle in her hands.

Pushing up towards sitting with his elbows, Jaime’s hand inches upward and inward, a little more than brushing over the heart of the growing tension within her.

“Are you just going to sit there, or are you going to get on with it?”

She lets go of his backside and places both hands on either side of his head as she leans down, meeting his welcoming mouth with her own as their bodies collide, rubbing together as she feels her blood rushing. The feeling of him under her, the brush of his clothing covered manhood against her thigh… Brienne has never touched or been touched like this. It’s nothing like sparring, not really, but its just as exhilarating.

Jaime squirms under her slightly, pressing a little closer, and Brienne feels a moan escape her, her body moving to meet Jaime’s movement before she thinks to stop it. He circles his hips, rubbing against her more intentionally and she buries her face into his hair, trying to steady her breathing.

“Look at me,” Jaime entreats, turning his face towards hers, “Tell me if you are having second thoughts.”

“I’m not having second thoughts,” she insists, flushing now from embarrassment as well as anticipation, “This is all just uncharted territory for me. I feel foolish not knowing if I’m doing this right, if my instincts are wrong.”

“In this realm,” he promises, “Following your instincts is doing it right.”

“What if you don’t like what I-” she begins but he cuts her off.

“I seriously doubt that will happen,” he sounds genuinely amused by the notion, “But how about this: If I find something unpleasant or unwelcome I’ll tell you, just so long as you promise to do the same.”

She nods, still feeling a little foolish but unable to resist the effects of his beaming at her, or the way their bodies are still pressed together.

“Tell me,” he whispers, mouth just shy of hers as he strains up towards her lips, “Tell me what your instincts are telling you, what you feel right now.”

“It’s hard to keep my hips still, they want to move.”

“Then maybe you should move them,” he rumbles, almost a purr against her lips, “I want you to move them.”

So she does, circling just a little at first, then emboldened by the sensation and Jaime’s low moan in reaction. Their kisses become less precise, more of general response than specific movements. Jaime’s hand moves back to her lower back, fingertips brushing bare skin where her shirt has ridden up and triggering a shudder of sensation. 

She wants more of that, the intensity of direct contact promising more of what she’s already chasing through cloth. She sits up, still pressed against Jaime below the waist and moves her hands to the hem of his shirt, sliding them up under to feel his warmth below. He seems to sense her intentions as he pushes up onto his elbows to lift off of the bed and nods as she begins to push his shirt upwards.

Holding him up with one hand at the base of his spine as she uses the other to pull his shirt over his head and from his arms, Brienne feels her breath catch at the sight of him half undressed before her. _You have already seen him naked as his nameday _she reminds herself.__

__It’s not the same._ _

__She lowers him back down against the bed, running her hands over the glorious expanse of his exposed skin, tracing scars and the smooth sections between, watching his reactions until she can no longer resist the longing to close the gap between them and kiss him once more._ _

__“Yes?” Jaime asks, tugging at her shirt and part of her is ashamed for him to see her but then she thinks, _it’s not as if he hasn’t seen it before_ and gathers the courage of sit up and bare her upper body to him. _ _

__He follows her movement, rising until their bodies press together once more, his chest against her breasts, and wraps his good hand around her back, dragging his lips along her shoulder, kissing her muscular and unfeminine upper arms and then down across her barely more pronounced that his chest._ _

__“Oh,” she gasps, as he reaches the small peak of her breast, circling around the rise of her nipple and then louder again as he runs his tongue over it, “Oh!”_ _

__“Can I?” he asks as his fingertips walk down her stomach and against the edge of her trousers, tugging just enough to indicate his intentions._ _

__She nods and his fingers dip down inside feeling their way south into the hair there and still further towards where she’s been pressing against him._ _

__“Damn,” he grumbles, as he overshoots his target evidently, “This useless hand.”_ _

__“You’re come a long way with it,” she reminds him, “You didn’t master everything you could do with the other one overnight either remember.”_ _

__“You deserve better than my clumsy pawing,” he insists, clearly frustrated._ _

__“You,” she can’t help scoffing, “are insane.”_ _

__Deserve better? How can he think it, when she’s her and he’s… well him!?_ _

__“Says the woman who decided to marry me.”_ _

__“I’m beginning to think that was taking advantage of your compromised mental state,” she mostly teases, “Just how hard did you hit your head when you dove out of the line of fire from Danaerys’ dragon?”_ _

__“Do you have any idea how much I desire you, Brienne?” Jaime murmurs from where he is, face pressed to her chest, “I have for far longer than that, for far longer I have admitted such a thing to myself. My actions betrayed it. My body betrayed it.”_ _

__“Why?” she can’t help replying aloud, “I’m grateful but I don’t understand. It just doesn’t seem possible. I’m not…”_ _

__She can’t finish the sentence. It cuts through the pleasure of this, the gift of something she can’t fathom for she can deserve._ _

__“I want you,” Jaime repeats, wrapping his maimed arm around her shoulder to help lift himself closer to her level and looking in her eyes, “I don’t know how to be any clearer with words but I will show you until you believe me if you let me. Will you permit me?”_ _

__She nods, once again short of words in the face of his, letting him pull her into an insistent kiss. His much maligned hand caresses her shoulders and her lower back and then snakes between their bodies, caressing and stroking her breasts, causing her hips to resume their earlier motion._ _

__“This angle here,” he murmurs, dragging his lips across the top of her shoulder from where it connects with her neck outwards, “drives me mad.”_ _

__Despite everything, the sincerity in Jaime’s eyes and the very present press of his physical reaction to her against her thigh, despite the vows they exchanged only an hour before Sansa’s assurances, Brienne’s first instinct is to angrily brush away the declaration as false and mockery. She swallows it, focusing instead on the feeling of his lips on her skin, on his hand at her breast, on his arm around her neck._ _

__“Mad?” she almost giggles instead, but it turns into something more akin to a moan as he continues his attentions._ _

__“It is a wonder you didn’t notice, all the way back during our bath at Harrenhal, I was half dead but you stood up and confronted me and I couldn’t control my reaction or the way that image burned into my memory.”_ _

__“Half a corpse and half a god,” she admits, “That’s what I thought when I first laid eyes on… well all of you.”_ _

__“It took me by surprise, getting hard at the sight of you like that then, but I did. You would never have allowed this, then, though,” he doesn’t quite ask._ _

__“No,” she confirms, “I couldn’t help the reactions you stirred up, but I didn’t love you yet, I didn’t understand you… even as much as I do now.”_ _

__There are things about Jaime she suspects she will never understand, but there are others she feels keenly that she comprehends more deeply than anyone else ever could. _I will be a good wife to him,_ she promises herself, _in the ways I can._ She’s little more quick witted than she is beautiful, but she can be relentlessly loyal, she can love him as he deserves to be loved._ _

__“I needed you to understand me, even then,” he tells her, “That’s why I sought you out, why I pushed and prodded and confessed.”_ _

__She’d never been sure why he’d done it, whether it was an act of dominance and aggression or a moment of weakness on his part. Either way it had changed things between them forever. It had changed the way she saw the world in ways she didn’t comprehend until later. Thank the Gods for that._ _

__“Oh Jaime,” she sighs, hands in his hair as he kisses his way back up her neck._ _

__“Shall we finish getting undressed,” he whispers against her ear, breath tickling her skin, “and I can show you what I’ve been thinking of?”_ _

__“Alright,” she agrees, nervous and anxious and eager as she separates herself from him in order to do just that._ _

__It is hard to tear her eyes from him, not half but fully godlike now as he has gotten back to health and he pulls his breeches and smallclothes downwards, revealing his hips and thighs and the way his manhood springs free. He’s beautiful and perfect and it hardly seems possible that he is here with her, telling he her loves her, showing that he desires her._ _

__“Come here,” he urges, leaning back against the bed and holding out his hand. She takes it, expecting him to bring her back to a similar position to the one she was in before, or down onto the bed itself, but he shifts his grip to her waist when it comes into his reach and urges it further up past his own._ _

__“By the Seven” he groans, visibly inhaling as her thighs near his shoulders, licking his lips._ _

__His hand strokes down her belly and into the hair below, brushing it aside as his other arm draws her closer, breath against her exposed flesh. And then his mouth is there, tongue lapping between her legs in slow long strokes._ _

__She feels her body tremble, finding it necessary to reach out and press her palm against the bedframe and then to grab hold of it with both hands. Whatever this is, it is unexpected but far more than pleasant. Jaime’s tongue movement changes directions sliding sideways and then in a more circular motion and she presses her cheek against her shoulder, enjoying this feeling but completely unsure of how she is supposed to react, what is expected._ _

__“How is that?” he asks, pausing and nuzzling his face against her inner thighs, breath warm against sensitive flesh._ _

__“Nice,” she says, before adding as he looks disappointed, “More than nice. I’m not sure how to-”_ _

__“Just let yourself react,” he urges, “you don’t have to hold yourself so still and silent. Tell me what you feel, what you want.”_ _

__“I don’t know,” she confesses, “I do want you to go on, though.”_ _

__“Like this?” he asks, softly swirling his tongue right at the apex of her sensations, “Or like this?” he offers, flicking quickly across that same spot._ _

__She finds her hand at the back of his head, holding him closer against her. He doesn’t seem to mind and the rising tide of sensation and tension coiling within her makes it possible to for the moment take him at his word that he wants to do this, that she can respond honestly._ _

__He presses his lips in and sucks and a noise escapes her own that in no way resembles words, he sucks more intently, keeping pace with the way her hips rock in response._ _

__When it happens, it is both the same and completely different from the fruits of her own efforts, less a receding tide of that urgency and more like the wave breaking upon the rocks, not so much fading as scattering, dispersing through her whole body in the form of a tingling sensation._ _

__Jaime does not stop, though he slows and gentles, as she shudders and gasps, head falling forward to rest against her own forearm where it is pressed against the headboard._ _

__“That was…” she finally manages, releasing her grip on the back of his head and reaching for the rest of the sentence, “Beyond my hopes.”_ _

____

~

Jaime looks up at her, taking a moment to note all subtle and not so subtle changes in Brienne’s carriage. The warmth he feels for her and the satisfaction of feeling hers makes him content to stay under her, face buried in her cunt, as long as she will allow it.

“That was just the beginning, my sweet-” the familiar endearment comes from his lips without thought but it sounds wrong as he hears it and he adjusts, “my beloved Brienne. 

He drags his tongue through the glistening folds covered in her enjoyment, comparing the taste of her satisfaction to that of earlier anticipation. He is relieved to find her ultimately no more squeamish in this arena than the battlefield. 

“Jaime,” she murmurs, arching back away from the head of the bed, eyes fluttering momentarily closed as he responded to his tongue’s renewed activity, “I want to do whatever it is that you desire, whatever you think I might not.”

“I don’t want anything unless you want it too,” he tries to explain, “If you could only understand how I want to make this perfect for you.”

“I know I won’t be perfect like you are, not at first at least, but I am going to learn,” Brienne says with an earnestness that breaks his heart.

“You are better than perfect,” he attempts again, “Gods if you could only know how much I adore the smell of you, the taste of you, that sharp little intake of breath you do when I do this.”

“I’ve heard men talk enough,” she insists, “They talk about the way women take it or how-”

He begins to understand he thinks, having heard all those same types of talk himself. She must expect him to hold her down (as if he could) and take his pleasure, to shove her head down and thrust… and yet still she’d said yes, still she’s eager to please.

“I’m not them,” he promises her, “This isn’t just an attempt to make you pliant… I enjoy doing this.”

He does. He always has, though sometimes the way Cersei used to yank his hair hurt. Brienne isn’t like that though, her touch is gentler somehow, despite her superior strength.

“Are you saying you don’t want me to return the favor?” she catches him off guard by responding, solemn and serious.

“Not unless you really want to,” he groans, cock straining at the thought despite his words, “I don’t want you to do anything that you don’t really want to.”

“I want to,” she swallows hard and blushes as she tells him, “I just don’t want to do it wrong.”

So earnest, his Brienne. It thrills him to think of her that way, as tied to him. Of course that would be her concern, not her own discomfort but fear of being less than exceptional at anything she tries. 

“As long as you don’t bite it, I doubt you could,” he offers, teasing a little to try to brighten up her somber affect.

She nods and pushes backwards, leaving a sticky trail down his chest as she readjusts downward, a determined look on her face.

“Oh,” her eyes and mouth widen as she brushes against his fully aroused state with her evidently still sensitive dripping wet cunt, reaction mirroring the sensation he feels as his entire being longs to grab her hip in order to hold her in place and press up into her.

“That’s what you do to me,” he needs her to understand, hating the knowledge that even after his admission she’s doubted her impact on him in this area, “That’s how tasting you makes me feel.”

“My body is still tingling,” she tells him, pausing her movement and grinding ever so lightly closer so that her clit rubs against the tip of him and letting out a moan.

“I don’t want to rush you,” he gasps, “But I’m going to have a very hard time keeping still if you keep up with that.”

“Then don’t,” she shudders, “I’m your wife, you don’t have to.”

His wife. He is going to enjoy calling her that, naming her as such to the rest of the word. Right now, though, he can’t ignore the feeling of her wet and warm against him. She wants him too, it is far too obvious now to doubt. 

“Are you sure?” he asks, though his body is screaming at him, “I meant what I said earlier.”

One last moment to make the smart choice instead of the one they both so clearly desire in this moment.

“Yes,” she tells him definitively, widening her straddle and relief surges through him as he is released from that restraint he’s been holding onto so desperately, “I want it so much, you so much.”

He shifts his hips and the next movement she makes brings the head of his cock against her entrance instead of along it.

He registers the wince as they come together, but then he’s embedded inside of her and Brienne does this sort of wiggle to settle herself around him and he strains up to kiss her and she rolls her hips and squeezes around him.

She arches her back as she rocks, riding his cock slowly at first but with growing urgency. He cups one of her modest breasts in his hand and guides his face to it, sucking on her small hardened nipple as he meets her thrusts with his own. He’d worried about making this good for her, but she’s obviously already enjoying it.

It’s not graceful or deliberate but the unrestrained honest pleasure of her response is more intoxicating that sophistication could be. _Deep breath_ he reminds himself, _Make this last. We have time._ No more fears of discovery. No more stealing time.

“I never thought,” she shudders, “I thought I’d never…”

“You feel so good, Brienne, Magnificent. You are so wet and tight and it is everything I can do not to finish right now. The rest of the world has no idea what they are missing out on and oh… If you keep doing that I am going to spend myself inside you momentarily.”

“I want you to,” Brienne assures him, “I want to pleasure you as you have pleasured me. I want your seed, Jaime. I want all of you.”

He’s only human and her words drive him over the precipice, spilling into her and feeling her cunt clench around him in response, feeling her peak in response to his own, milking every last drop out of his cock. 

He moves his hand to bring her face back to his and kisses her thoroughly as he feels himself soften within her, hardly able to believe that this is real, that he’s really here with Brienne that she agreed to marry him, gave herself to him body and soul, that she’s here with her arms around him.

“Thank you,” she murmurs, kissing him lightly as she finally pushes herself up and away from him, leaving behind a mixture of both of them: arousal, release, and some smears of blood. 

“No,” he reaches out, stopping her by grabbing hold on the side of her ribcage, “Thank you.”

He is just debating whether to revisit her cunt with his mouth or if maybe a bath could be fetched, when there is a knock on the door. 

“Let me,” he says, as they both jump in surprise at the interruption, flinging one fur in her direction as he reaches for the closest item of clothing to cover himself with as he pads towards the door.

“My message is for Lady Brienne,” very surprised looking serving girl stammers, evidently unsure how to respond to being faced with a mostly naked Kingslayer instead. 

“Shall I give it to her for you?” he grins. It’s meant to be a smirk but he suspects that his genuine joy overtakes his intentions, “Or would you prefer to wait for my lady wife to be ready to receive it herself?”

“Lady Stark wants everyone underground before sundown,” the girl decides simply to tell him, before darting away, doubtless to spread word of this encounter.

“I guess it is a good thing you knocked some sense into me,” he grins, turning around to find Brienne already halfway to where he is standing after closing the door away, “Otherwise we really might have spent all of our precious time together wandering around the Godswood philosophizing.”

“I don’t know,” Brienne replies, closing the distance between them and pressing him up against the door with the full length of her body, “Seems to me that you probably would have gotten around to the point, eventually.”

He silently curses how long it took him to arrive at this point, regretting all the wasted time he could have spent making love to this generous honest woman, if he’d only faced the truth about himself earlier. But then she runs her hands up the back of this thighs and lifts him up off the ground, kissing him soundly and he’s too focused on the feeling of her body against him and the way his spent cock aches with the desire to rise again despite being nowhere near ready for it.

“I mean, I did tell you I dreamed of you,” he groans as she kisses her way down his throat, holding him firmly against the door, that reaction completely undermining the intended teasing.

Whatever happens when the White Walkers get to Winterfell, Jaime Lannister vows to himself that before that happens he’s going to ensure that his wife can never doubt his passion for her again. 

Fortunately for him, it appears that she has the same idea in reverse, as she keeps him pinned in place while her lips move downward over his body.

“I promised you something and then got distracted,” she affirms, tongue tracing each of his hip bones and then the inside of his thighs. 

Brienne is a woman who keeps her promises.


End file.
